Neurons in the brain are never quiet. They are constantly producing and receiving signals – like background noise – yet the influences of these signals on behavior remain largely mysterious. The researchers [at the the University of Lausanne] recorded the behaviors of thousands of flies and […] showed that fluctuating neural signals were indeed required to reproduce fruit fly behaviors. Most surprisingly, by looking closely at these neural networks, they found that these signals did not simply disrupt neural activity, but could actually sculpt behavior in a meaningful way.